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6 responses to “Batch check in”

As far as check-in is concerned you can select multiple items in a list or library and do a mass check-in of all items (as long as all required fields are filled in). This does only work within a library or list. If you need to fill in massiv fields I would switch to datasheet view and do a copy&paste action – assuming that all items should be filled identitcal.

If you have a publishing portal, you can also open up the “content and site-structure” dialog and select to root-web of you portal. Then switch the view to “checked out by me”. Now you can even check-in all items & docs across lists and libraries with just one click.

This tool covers some bases that other batch-editors do not, in that you can batch-edit fields like content type and people picker. However, one big flaw is that in when editing Managed Metadata fields with this tool, you cannot assign more than one value! Even if you have chosen to allow multiple values for that field in the column settings, QiPoints batch editor does not recognize that setting and will only allow a single value for MMS columns – a fatal drawback!

And here’s the interesting reply from Chris Ang from QiPoint:
“My name is Chris (a representative at QIPoint Inc.) and I am writing in response to this posting on our “SharePoint Batch Edit Properties and Check In” product.

First of all thank you for writing this post and we hope this tool is useful for users. All feedback is appreciated as we continue to improve our tools for our very valued customers.

“As far as check-in is concerned you can select multiple items in a list or library and do a mass check-in of all items (as long as all required fields are filled in)”

– Thank you eibenh. This is true, however, SharePoint OOB does not allow you to bulk populate those required fields for multiple items (that have a blank value only) and check in at once. It requires you to look for the items that do not pass validation, perhaps filter them in datasheet view by the required column (or as you mentioned in “Manage Content and Structure”), and then modify each one (which is not very hard to do but does take some time if you have a lot of them to update).

Our tool also allows the items selected to be auto-checked out on demand/when needed, edited/populated, and auto-checked-in within one window.

For example: This helps when the user has to select many items but some are checked out (by them) and some are not, they can simply select them all and our tool will understand which ones need checking out/in and act accordingly when an update is executed. If they do not have access to edit an item or it is checked out by someone else, the update will still run successfully but inform the user of the items that failed due to those conditions.

“If you need to fill in massive fields I would switch to datasheet view ”

-This can work for most fields but if you attempt to change multiple content types, taxonomy fields, business data columns.. it is not supported in datasheet view.

More organizations are using managed metadata, content types and find out that although you can set “default location” values for folders and defaults for fields, if the documents/items are already present, it is tedious to have to edit one item term at a time.

FYI we are also working on an extension to this product which supports updating thousands of items at once based on a user defined query (such as Status = “pending”, update “Assigned To”), as opposed to selecting them from the list, both options will then be available in our product.

“However, one big flaw is that in when editing Managed Metadata fields with this tool, you cannot assign more than one value! Even if you have chosen to allow multiple values for that field in the column settings”

– Thank you Kyle, this has been fixed in the latest release.

We will continue to constantly improve our tools (providing all updates to customers) and provide the best support possible.

We understand that our success is based on your success with our products and services, so we have 1 year technical support included in all our products.

We are currently building a community support forum for our users.

Thank you very much for trying our products and look for your support.
We are dedicated to our customers and will provide you with the best support possible (even if you only use our free products!)”

The reason why it is so quiet after Chris’ last posting is probably the whole batch edit tool from Qipoint can’t be installed anymore, because it keeps telling you the license key is invalid.(also on new installations with latest trial download)
Chris, from Qipoint, just keeps telling we have to just download the latest version and throw away the old installation files(that aren’t there on a new installation of course).

Before this we tried a batch edit tool from codeplex. This is an unsupported version that does it’s job a little bit, but keeps crashing once in a while.

Batch edit of content types is possible in SharePoint OOB. The trick is that you set the content type column as the first column in the datasheet view. This way the datasheet view will display the content type column. Then you can type in an existing content type(there is no pull down in the datasheet view) and drag it down as in Excel, to apply to all the other records(files).
Tricky with changing content types is that some metadata fields may or may not exist in the one or the other content type. I still don’t know it by batch editing this way you will make everything corrupt or just lose your metadata when a column is not available under the content type you change it to.